The first time I dined at Charlie Palmer at Bloomingdale's was three years ago. Or maybe it was four? It was a simple but wonderful lunch of beef sliders and French fries; this much I recall because the memory of those fries has stuck with me. They were old-school, twice-cooked homemade fries, and whenever I've eaten a French fry since then, I have ranked them in my mind against the fries at Charlie Palmer.

Sadly, I must retract that yardstick. The fries have changed. I'm not sure when or why this happened. It could have been three or four years ago. Or it might have been in 2011 when chef Amar Santana left to open his own place in Laguna. The staff insists the fries are still made from scratch, but I question that assertion. They look and taste exactly like frozen fries to me, but I'll take them at their word – wink, wink. They're not what I'd call horrible. They're just not the same.

Never mind the fries. There is plenty to like about the restaurant these days. The chef in charge is Seakyeong Kim, who has worked with the legendary Palmer for years, most recently at Charlie Palmer in Dallas, and at the celebrity chef's flagship Aureole in New York before that.

I've found a new yardstick in the bone marrow. The veal bones arrive still smoldering. When the plate is placed in the center of the table for sharing, I reach immediately for one of the half-foot-long ivories, and it's not until a few seconds after I've lifted it off the plate that I realize my fingers are melting and I drop it. Undeterred, I reach for it again and drag it fast and low across the table to my plate. I grab a demitasse spoon and start scraping up spoonful after spoonful of the gelatinous gold. Beneath a thin layer of crisp breadcrumbs, the quivering marrow delivers a distant taste of garlic and a whisper of raisin-like sweetness (prunes, I believe). It's gone in an instant, but there's still one unclaimed bone, and I glance around to see if anyone else is about to reach it.

They're not. Everyone else is too captivated by the flatbread and the escargot to notice the marrow. And that's when I realize there's only one escargot left – and everyone seems to be eyeballing it. It doesn't look like anything I've ever associated with snails. Presented in a steamer basket like dim sum dumplings, the inky black escargot are hidden inside shumai with garlic butter and topped with toasted Parmesan. The delicate noodle wrapper, the salty crunch of dried Parmesan, the earthy umami of the snails ... I cannot imagine a more perfectly balanced bite.

The flatbread is like an oblong pizza of the cracker-thin variety, and it's a pretty good representation of the style. The flavor changes weekly, and the one I sample is scattered with mushrooms and black truffle. It smells like a forest after the rain. The waiter talks us into adding prosciutto, and I'm glad we take his advice.

All three of these dishes are from the restaurant's small-plates menu, which is where I consistently have the best luck: clams with chorizo, grilled octopus with fingerling potatoes and celery pesto, a house-made salami, beer-braised mussels with red curry ... all excellent.

I do find one resounding dud among the small plates, and that's the slow-poached shrimp with Dungeness crab salad. The shrimp are fine, typical shrimp cocktail. But when I take a bite of the crab, which is smothered in cocktail sauce, it tastes not like crab but like a chopped-up rubber band. Were I willing, I could probably chew on this for hours. I can't fathom how a texture such as this is achieved with fresh crab meat. It's not something I care to repeat.

I also won't repeat the chef's tasting menu. When I order the tasting menu, the chef comes to the table to ask if there are any special requests or dietary restrictions. I tell him that I'm in his hands, whatever he wants to cook. He says he likes to keep it light and simple, and I say that sounds terrific. But when the first course arrives, it's the same beet salad from the à la carte menu, which is beautiful but not exactly "light and simple" if I still have five more courses in the pipeline. Next comes beef tartare. This, too, appears to be a full-size portion, a generous mound of chopped beef topped with a whole, slow-poached chicken egg. It's large enough to serve as my entire meal. Delicious, sure, but "light and simple" it is not. This is followed by a fairly large piece of fish, and a substantial serving of pork belly, then a main course of duck two ways and a gigantic guava bombe for dessert.

The duck breast is raw, not rare, which gives me an excuse not to eat it. And the fish is burnt to a crisp. Literally. It looks like it was previously on fire and nobody noticed – completely black around the edges. When I take a bite, all I can taste is an acrid blast of charcoal that takes my breath away. My waiter must see the look on my face because he rushes over immediately. "Do you not like it?" he asks, genuinely concerned. "I'll just go ahead and move on to the next course," I say, trying to correct my facial expression.

If I had never attempted the chef's tasting menu, I would have come away with a far greater opinion of this restaurant. On another visit, when I'm dining à la carte, I enjoy a wonderful entree of roasted chicken with crisp skin, black truffle gnocchi and sweet-potato emulsion, which acts more as a sauce than side dish. The ribeye steak is a terrific piece of meat, although it screams for salt.

Desserts are unfortunately lackluster. That guava thing is so sweet that I don't want more than one bite. An assortment of tarts is amateurishly presented. A crème brûlée trio is probably the best option, even though they're not quite set. They're runny, like dessert sauces, rather than softly firm like the custards they're meant to be.

As most people probably know by now, this restaurant is beautiful and extremely comfortable, a grown-up oasis amid the hustle and bustle of South Coast Plaza. But something I should point out is this: Happy hour in the adjoining bar is huge, so unless you like hearing the crowd chant, "Shot! Shot! Shot!" followed by a boisterous singalong to "Gangnam Style," you might want to ask for a table as far away from the lounge as possible.

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